At Last, The 'Guardian' Article I Can Completely Agree With!

It must be Christmas, or something...

Susan Cooper’s 1973 novel The Dark is Rising is clearly influenced by Masefield. She too draws on Arthurian legend and English folklore (the character of Herne the Hunter appears in both), as it intrudes into the cosy domestic rituals of the young hero, Will Stanton, who goes to bed on midwinter eve, the night before his 11th birthday, and wakes to find himself a central figure in an ancient battle between light and dark.

When the nature writer Robert Macfarlane, for whom it was a formative childhood book, tweeted about it recently he was amazed to receive thousands of responses from all over the world from impassioned readers who return to it every Christmas. The result is a Twitter reading group (#TheDarkisReading) set to begin, like the novel, on 20 December; over 1,300 people have said they want to take part.

The Dark is Rising is a disturbing book, in a way that children’s stories rarely are now. At the beginning, Cooper describes Will’s fear of the dark in a way that makes the hairs stand up on your arms; she draws out echoes of the old powers of the English landscape – now hostile, now beguiling – in a way that recalls the Gawain poet.

“It feels ever more relevant in a time when the dark really does seem to be rising,” Macfarlane says. For anyone weary of the cheap sentiment and tinselly glitz of so many Christmas offerings, and wanting a taste of deep midwinter mystery, these novels are the best place to start, and these new ways of sharing them are part of the magic.

Ah, 'Guardian'! You had to revert to type at the end, didn't you?

Never mind. Try it. You won't be disappointed! I wasn't.